Reply to The Research on Various Childcare Options

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Reply to "The Research on Various Childcare Options"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]No one can seriously discuss these studies on DCUM. People are extremely sensitive to their childcare choices, and no one is more sensitive the mothers who wanted to stay home but could not afford it and feel guilty. Don’t! You made the choice you had to make, no sense in ruminating over what will likely be totally fine in the long term.

Common sense will tell you that babies are probably best served staying with their mother who loves them until they reach an age where socializing benefits them. Everything else - daycare, nanny, etc. - are just shuffling around lesser-but-fine alternatives.[/quote]

We know multiple couples who could have afforded a nanny but instead went with daycare. Those families had two successful parents, no student debt from top schools, and wealthy grandparents. One family in particular probably had a HHI between $350-400k. I don't think they would have chosen daycare unless they thought it was as good of an option as a nanny.[/quote]

Yeah I have several friends who are pretty successful and have higher incomes than that who sent their kids to daycare from an early age. Way before 3 or 4. Sometimes it's just easier that way because you never have to deal with an unreliable/sick nanny, don't need to worry about a nanny might be doing in your house when you're not there, easier to work from home, etc. It's not just about cost. Plus I've heard from multiple friends that nannies just aren't great at "teaching" anything.

I don't really know if I believe that a mom staying home is "by common sense" the best option. Spreading out the work and having a nanny come for part of the day who can really focus on the kid and then get a break might be better than a mom who is overworked/tired and can't give her all to the kid because she has to do housework, cooking, etc. Personally I was relieved when I got back to work because being the stay at home mom/house manager during maternity leave felt like a lot!
 [/quote]

But the downside of daycare is that they can have strict rules about sick kids, and send kids home with the sniffles. And of course, being in group care with a lot of other kids and multiple caregivers als means kids in daycare are more likely to get sick, so this can become a nasty cycle, especially if you have multiple kids in daycare. Add to this strict rules about fevers in an age group where fevers are more common than in the general population.

With nannies, kids generally catch fewer viruses and most nannies will care for sick kids unless they are, themselves, too sick to work. Most nannies are not taking off four days for a cold, but a daycare could easily refuse to allow a kid in class for four days with a cold, especially post-Covid. [/quote]

Totally, I don’t disagree with any of that. I guess my point was just to say that I have friends who make a lot and still chose daycare despite having “options”. [b]And I’m talking about like…double big law, banking, private equity, doctors[/b]. I don’t know anyone keeping their kids home until they’re 3.[/quote]

This is unique to dc and a few other blue cities.  In most of America, no one with a high earning career would ever put their child in daycare.  [/quote]

I live in DC and disagree with the PP. I know a lot of people here who kept their kids home until 3. Off the top of my head, I can only think of two families who put their kid in daycare before age 1, and they were not happy about it. I can't really think of any families who were really enthusiastic about daycare, especially for infants/babies. It's the kind of thing that just feels intuitively off to you (leaving a 3 or 4 month old baby in a daycare facility) and most people will try to avoid it if they can.

I will accept that some people actually choose daycare even when they have other options, but I'm raising kids in DC and don't know anyone for whom that is true.[/quote]

Interesting. I also live in DC and know many families who have put their kids in daycare before age 1. If you own a home, have at least one parent who is a fed or works in the non-profit sector, and have student loan debt, a nanny is generally out of reach financially, at least in my circle.

I also know people who could afford a nanny and choose daycare. [/quote]

Same. We live in silver spring though, not an expensive part of DC.  Most people we know used daycare or a nanny share.  We used an in-home daycare for the first couple years which was great for us.  Did I feel guilty about leaving my 3mo at daycare each morning? Of course. But they were happy overall and quitting my job just wasn’t a viable option for us.  If I could have taken a longer break I would have.

[b]We have neighbors who are trying to keep their baby at home for a year while working full time and the wife looks like a zombie.[/b][/quote]

This is the real problem with these "daycare is terrible for kids" messages. It's only "bad" (less ideal) if the alternative is a mentally healthy, engaged caregiver in a stable home. It makes no sense to create an enormously stressful situation at home just to avoid daycare.[/quote]

(1) Are people saying daycare is terrible for kids, or ar they discussing a study that compares daycare to other care options and found some issues with daycare, especially for very young kids?

(2) Of course no one is suggesting that a child would be better off in an unstable home with a miserable caretaker than in daycare. Who is arguing this? No one, that's who. [/quote]

Suggesting daycare is only something people do if they have to because they don't have enough money for a nanny does suggest to me that person thinks daycare is bad for children.

And to clarify, people are not discussing a study. They are discussing a blog post that attempts to summarize the research on the impacts of daycare on children's cognitive skills and behavior. In its attempt to present this summary to a general audience, the author omits a lot of the nuance in the research and falls into the trap of claiming that observational studies can reasonably estimate effect sizes.[/quote]

Daycare is the cheapest option. For most people, cost is a central factor in their choice of childcare. I'll go one further and note that more expensive daycares are often a lot nicer than cheaper daycares. I know this because we were on a tight budget for childcare and we couldn't afford infant care at the centers I actually liked. All the places we could afford were questionable, at best. So when I say that daycare, especially for infants, is often a choice made simply because better options are not available, I say that from experience and not because I'm judging anyone who puts kids in daycare. I also know some daycares are better than others and that if you have the money, you can probably find a really high quality daycare that mitigates the negative aspects of daycare.

No one in this thread is doing scientific analysis, if you want to combat some of the conclusions being drawn, that's fine, but the argument that the underlying study says nothing or that no conclusions can be drawn is a weird one. It's data, we can talk about it.[/quote]

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